Enhancement of gas distribution uniformity in a claus process catalytic reactor using computational fluid dynamics

A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been applied to investigate the gas distribution performance in an industrial scale Claus process catalytic reactor. Perforated plates with different design schemes have been studied as gas distributor in the reactor. Three effective parameters on the distributor's performance, including arrangement, diameter and pitch of the holes have been examined. The employed model has been validated with available empirical data. Simulation results indicated that increasing the distributor porosity by enlarging the holes diameter has a significant impact on the gas distribution enhancement. It was also concluded that by setting the studied affective parameters on their obtained optimum values, the gas flow uniformity index can be improved more than double in comparison with that of the original distributor (from 0.34 to 0.71). However, since raising the porosity of the distributor more than 0.26, increases the shear stress on the catalyst bed, the maximum allowable shear stress should be considered.